Top 30 Alice McDermott Quotes (2024 Update)

Alice McDermott Quote: “We are surrounded by story.”

1. “We are surrounded by story.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.”

2. “The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?”

3. “The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “When I’m not writing, I can’t make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I’ve found that seems to begin to do that.”

4. “When I’m not writing, I can’t make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I’ve found that seems to begin to do that.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “I’m always telling my students, don’t – don’t worry so much third person, first person. It doesn’t make that much difference.”

5. “I’m always telling my students, don’t – don’t worry so much third person, first person. It doesn’t make that much difference.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!”

6. “We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “If we could live without suffering, we’d find no peace in heaven.”

7. “If we could live without suffering, we’d find no peace in heaven.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The world was a cruder, more vulgar place than the one I had known. This was the language required to live in it, I supposed.”

8. “The world was a cruder, more vulgar place than the one I had known. This was the language required to live in it, I supposed.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.”

9. “A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion.”

10. “In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “History was easy: the past with all loss burned out of it, all sorrow worn out of it – all that was merely personal comfortably removed.”

11. “History was easy: the past with all loss burned out of it, all sorrow worn out of it – all that was merely personal comfortably removed.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “But love’s a tonic, Michael, not a cure. He was a bastard still.”

12. “But love’s a tonic, Michael, not a cure. He was a bastard still.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “It had been raining, that gray, unpoetic rain of midwinter in a dreary suburb.”

13. “It had been raining, that gray, unpoetic rain of midwinter in a dreary suburb.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “She saw how the skim of filth, which was despair, which was hopelessness, fell like soot on the lives of the poor.”

14. “She saw how the skim of filth, which was despair, which was hopelessness, fell like soot on the lives of the poor.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “It was in its strangeness and in its familiarity an illustration of someone else’s life going on in its own way, steeped in itself, its own business, its own dailyness, its own particular sorrow or joy, all of it more or less predictable.”

15. “It was in its strangeness and in its familiarity an illustration of someone else’s life going on in its own way, steeped in itself, its own business, its own dailyness, its own particular sorrow or joy, all of it more or less predictable.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “There was... her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can’t have one without the other...”

16. “There was... her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can’t have one without the other...”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Guilt is glorious when it’s well earned.”

17. “Guilt is glorious when it’s well earned.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we’re gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.”

18. “The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we’re gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Isn’t it funny how we all die at the same time? Always at the end of our lives. Why worry?”

19. “Isn’t it funny how we all die at the same time? Always at the end of our lives. Why worry?”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “I’m sorry this happened to you, Marie,′ he said wearily. ‘There’s a lot of cruelty in the world.’ And then he waved his hat to indicate the paths through the park and all the people on them. ‘You’ll be lucky if this is your worst taste of it.”

20. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Marie,′ he said wearily. ‘There’s a lot of cruelty in the world.’ And then he waved his hat to indicate the paths through the park and all the people on them. ‘You’ll be lucky if this is your worst taste of it.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “As if only he and the blind man could see what the rest of them could not.”

21. “As if only he and the blind man could see what the rest of them could not.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Billy didn’t need someone to pour him his drinks, he needed someone to tell him that living isn’t poetry. It isn’t prayer. To tell him and convince him. And none of us could do it because every one of us thought that as long as Billy believed it was, as long as he kept himself believing it, then maybe it could still be true.”

22. “Billy didn’t need someone to pour him his drinks, he needed someone to tell him that living isn’t poetry. It isn’t prayer. To tell him and convince him. And none of us could do it because every one of us thought that as long as Billy believed it was, as long as he kept himself believing it, then maybe it could still be true.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The owner’s wife gave me a container of chicken soup and a quart of rice pudding to take home. She was a broad, solid woman with thick arms and legs. She swiped vigorously at the stain on my coat with a wad of dampened paper towel, and I remembered Pegeen then: There’s always someone nice.”

23. “The owner’s wife gave me a container of chicken soup and a quart of rice pudding to take home. She was a broad, solid woman with thick arms and legs. She swiped vigorously at the stain on my coat with a wad of dampened paper towel, and I remembered Pegeen then: There’s always someone nice.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “For one of us at least, we knew, we were certain – this is how we saw the world – there would never again be loneliness in life.”

24. “For one of us at least, we knew, we were certain – this is how we saw the world – there would never again be loneliness in life.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “A book tour is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility.”

25. “A book tour is, first and foremost, an exercise in humility.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Language is the writer’s only tool – we really don’t have anything else – but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.”

26. “Language is the writer’s only tool – we really don’t have anything else – but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “The devil loves these short, dark days.”

27. “The devil loves these short, dark days.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “It’s sometimes more torment for a man, Mr. Fagin said, to consider what might have been than to live with what is.”

28. “It’s sometimes more torment for a man, Mr. Fagin said, to consider what might have been than to live with what is.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “There was tremendous affection in Billy’s eyes, or at least they held a tremendous offer of affection, a tremendous willingness to find whomever he was talking to bright and witty and better than most.”

29. “There was tremendous affection in Billy’s eyes, or at least they held a tremendous offer of affection, a tremendous willingness to find whomever he was talking to bright and witty and better than most.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “She liked the salty taste of contradiction on her tongue.”

30. “She liked the salty taste of contradiction on her tongue.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “This was, I thought, the language of shy men, men too much alone with their reading and their ideas – politics, war, distant countries, tyrants. Men who would bury their heads in such stuff just to avert their eyes from a woman’s simple heartache.”

31. “This was, I thought, the language of shy men, men too much alone with their reading and their ideas – politics, war, distant countries, tyrants. Men who would bury their heads in such stuff just to avert their eyes from a woman’s simple heartache.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Fairness demanded that grief should find succor, that wounds should heal, insult and confusion find recompense and certainty, that every living person God had made should not, willy-nilly, be forever unmade.”

32. “Fairness demanded that grief should find succor, that wounds should heal, insult and confusion find recompense and certainty, that every living person God had made should not, willy-nilly, be forever unmade.”

— Alice McDermott

Alice McDermott Quote: “Once you learn to do it, you’ll be expected to do it.”

33. “Once you learn to do it, you’ll be expected to do it.”

— Alice McDermott

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